Women and gender in the People's Republic of China

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Lesbian Literature Seized at NGO Forum on Women
The International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commision press release, 4 September 1995. Members of the China Organizing Committee (COC) of the NGO Forum on Women confiscated Chinese-language publications of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, which included action alerts and information on human rights abuses against lesbians in various countries around the World, although none of the material included information on China.
Speaking Up for Invisible Rural Women
By Antoaneta Bezlova, IPS, 30 August 1998. Xie Lihua is journalist and social activist. Urban women and rural women in China are like two different worlds. Instead of eulogising the model wife, she attacks the archaic values held in esteem for women in China today. People condemn her for shattering existing myths, but there is support from peasant women.
Six men get death for selling brides to farmers
The Straits Times, 24 September 2000. The defendants headed a gang that kidnapped women from Yunnan and Guizhou and took them to Jiangsu, where they were handed over to a peasant gang for sale to peasants. Trafficking in women has become a common practice in China where many poor farmers are unable to marry because they cannot afford to pay a dowry and women prefer to marry into better-off families or move to the city to work.
Thoroughly Modern Women Disconcert Many in China
By Philip P. Pan, The Washington Post, 26 December 2000. A national discussion about what it means to be a modern woman in China. The government points out that not only is it taboo for a single woman to bear a child, it is also illegal: in our traditional culture we have strict rules on sexual relations; the majority makes the law, and we must consider the majority's moral view: You get married, you form a family, then you have children. Unease about the rapid progress women have made in China.
China decides homosexuality no longer mental illness
South China Morning Post 8 March 2001. China's psychiatric association is removing homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses. The Chinese Psychiatric Association has concluded that homosexuality is not a perversion, and many homosexuals lead perfectly normal lives. Still, many homosexuals endure harassment.
Beating back domestic violence
By Wen Chihua, South China Morning Post, 28 March 2001. Domestic violence occurs in 30 per cent of mainland families, affecting mainly women and children. A program to educate medical professionals on the problem, and that it is a social problem rather than a simple domestic matter. Violence against women is a disturbing legacy of China's ancient patriarchal society.
Women Cadres Play Big Role in China
Xinhua, 6 June 2001. Women now account for 36.6 percent of the country's total number of cadres. The ratio of women in the leading bodies of the Communist Party and government has also increased considerably.
Chinese Now More Tolerant Toward Transsexuals
Xinhua, 7 April 2002. According to official figures, there are nearly 400,000 transsexuals in China, and over the past 16 years, more than 1,000 of them have realized their life-time dream to live as their real selves.